The invention is applied notably for combating illegal downloading of intellectual works (uploading or downloading—and any form of handover for a broadcast or a stream activation), as well as the sending of unsolicited messages or the blanket solicitation of subscribers in order to encourage people to call numbers that are in reality charged for notably. It is also applied for analyzing and protecting interdependencies in the critical information and communication infrastructures. It is also applied for instilling trust in relationships between communicators.
Hereinafter the word “stream” will mean notably transmissions of files, documents, transmissions of streams, mail, telephone calls, in analog or digital form, and a transmission via an activation of one's equipment by a third party, following their voluntary or involuntary handover. This stream can take place between all types of terminals or of communication media. The activation and the addressees or the content of the stream may or may not be voluntary, and chosen or random.
Hereinafter, the word “server” will mean at the same time a server, a computer, an information processing machine or any medium involved in an information-processing operation of distributing information. This covers any communication medium, any equipment capable of transmitting a stream over a telecommunication or television broadcasting network, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants or else sensor or actuator networks. More generally, it covers the equipment associated with the foregoing and capable of being involved in this action, for example external electronic memories.
The networks, which may be open or closed, used in telecommunication for the transmission and delivery of all types of stream experience the coexistence of legal or illegal, friendly or inappropriate usage. Their great number, in terms of diversity and of data rates reduces the possibility of easily detecting these deviant usages. Added to the technical difficulties are legal, regulatory, ethical, cultural or economic constraints.
Downloads notably on the Internet, or variants such as peer-to-peer, handovers for the purpose of a one-off stream as well as continuous “streaming”, have essentially appeared with the emergence of high bit-rate service for the subscriber (ADSL or optical fiber). This problem is very topical in the world but particularly in France following the present success of high bit-rate service and in particular of the following constraints which are sometimes contradictory:                the creators and producers wish to be remunerated for access to their works;        the internet service providers (ISPs) do not want to police the network;        most internet surfers wish to consume legally, provided that it is simple and cheap;        finally, data protection bodies, like the CNIL in France, are reluctant to observe, outwith any legal framework, the private behaviors of the internet surfers and to gain access to the content and to the private data of the citizens on a network, the IP address, notably in France, being the subject of debate with respect to whether it belongs in the private domain.        
Data protection can therefore incidentally promote pirating since it also protects the pirates.
There is therefore a need to combat illegal downloading (uploading, downloading and any variant) on a large scale while complying with the foregoing constraints. Essentially, it involves finding, tracing and identifying the major pirates who collect audiovisual content or computer files in order to place them in the commercial circuit, this activity complying with the laws in force. Encouraging the standard user to consume legally means notably being easier and cheaper than consuming illegally.
Several known anti-pirating solutions could be envisaged, but they do not satisfy the need and do not comply with all the required constraints. Filtering of content on the networks operates with difficulty on the scale of the Internet or of a 3G network. The “radars” placed in strategic locations on the network for controlling content are only partially authorized and with various restrictions, because they constitute the open way to spying on content on the convergence networks, such spying often being similar to illegal tapping. Any process that is too intrusive or not discriminating ethically is moreover likely to trigger as a response a rush toward stiff protection methods, such as data encryption, which, in turn, would make them more difficult to observe and would cause a reciprocal ratcheting-up of resources leading to the coexistence of spaces with excess opaqueness or excess porosity. Moreover, the technical generations of hackers are changing rapidly, typically every 3 years. Downloading tools are rapidly becoming obsolete particularly since, within each technical generation, the counterfeiters know how to change suddenly as soon as the pirating method becomes too dangerous for them. It is therefore not very effective to track the methods of the current attacks and to think of a security system that can be kept up to date, because this system would be unlocked a few months later, without the possibility of sufficient change. In contrast, the object of the invention is to propose an open solution furnished with sufficient open-endedness to destroy or limit the various illegal methods on the Internet while complying with the various applicable constraints.
The telecommunication networks are experiencing a fall in the costs of routine use but a concomitant sophistication of value-added services. This divergence creates an asymmetry in which, for example, sending messages or making telephone calls for nefarious ends, costs the attacker less and less but costs the victims more and more, notably through call-back numbers with very high charges. The result of this is that it is technically and financially easy to send bulk streams to a large number of interlocutors, causing general nuisance and a sufficient proportion of private individuals likely to fall into the trap. Within the enormous streams traveling over the telecommunication networks, there is a need to sort and examine the messages that have a profile characteristic of this type of transmittal.
Similarly, the downward trend in the costs of sending a stream, combined with the ease of bulk transmittals, opens a dangerous window favorable for example to spam, to “worms” or to computer viruses. These deviances are made easier by the absence, for technical or social reasons, of the easy application, for example, of cryptographic protocols for the nonrepudiation of transmittal, or of reception, which would make it possible to ascertain the origin and the destination of the messages. These obstacles require new solutions for examining the streams, solutions that make it possible to reduce these risks while respecting the legal requirements and the rules relating to privacy, intimacy and the desire of many users to remain anonymous.
Amongst the other constraints, there is the fact that, on the universal network of digital convergence, the Internet but also, for example, the network of the GPRS or 3G telecoms operators, the servers are sometimes out of space-time reach. They can, for example, be out of easy reach of the justice of a country for reasons notably either that the server is situated abroad, or it is in the country or in a neighboring zone but constantly operates through identity evasion (“it zaps”): the lifetime of the server is ephemeral, the latter is born, carries out its misdeeds and disappears to reappear under another identity.
Finally, there is a problem associated with the scattering or cooperation (“napterization”) of the servers. There is an increasing amount of peer-to-peer activity (Bittorrent, eDonkey, eMule), of overlay applications on the Internet, or of distributed computing, namely that the multimedia content can come from several servers simultaneously or otherwise.